Infor Visual, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Epicor 9

Introduction:
My name is Roberto Morris and I am running as ERP Project Manager for a British Company in the sheet steel manufacturing industry. I am 6 weeks into the project. The company has 100 employees and turns over ?12m. My requisite for the project is to reduce business risk - given that our current system PROMAN has dwindling support. I feel however that if done correctly this project could not only reduce business risk but transorm a rather tired company set in it's ways.
Brief on business:
We are a make to order / engineer to order company with product ranging from simple bracketry with a single level bom and 6 stage routing to fully assembled mechanical assemblies. Mechanical assembly boms can contain 500+ parts with multiple levels - sub-assemblies within sub-assemblies. We currently offer and hold to within 95% a 3 week lead time as standard unless any procured materials extend beyond this.
ERP:
1. We are looking for an ERP solution that removes the business risk associated with unsupported software.
2. A strong quote system and customer management system.
3. A strong scheduling system.
4. A strong business intelligence module - week 1 of each new month in the company sees each department head scramble to pull together excel spreadsheet stats for a monthly management meeting
I have shortlisted Infor Visual, MS Dynamics AX, Epicor 9.
I have had Epicor 9 demo'd twice, Infor are due to demo 09/02, MS Dynamics are due to demo 16/02.
These demos will be followed up with site visits to see the software in real situations.
Any advice / input from this group would be greatly received.
Thank you.
Roberto.

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We are using Oracle APPS(ERP) for last five years. We are the manufacturer of varieties
heavy Crane. The module you have mentioned, all we are using most satisfactorily. I am
looking after BOM and CRM modules. You can think about Oracle APPS also.

Hi Roberto,
You can consider Lawson M3 also. Lawson is a very strong solution for
MTO/ETO kind of companies.
Lawson has a very strong Business Intelligence module too with dashboards
and pre-defined cubes.
I am sure you would find it good for your requirements.
Wish you luck.
Regards,
Amit.

I would agree with Amit that Lawson M3 is very strong and has a wider
implementation foot print for MTO/ETO type of companies.
But would disagree with him on the BI & dashboards features. One of our
divisions, use Lawson M3 (Movex) and most of the reporting / BI development
is custom developed as the inbuilt features are very poor. Another point is
that they are in the midst of coming up with a latest version of Lawson M3
this year. So I would suggest you to wait till the release of the version,
incase you plan to go ahead with Lawson. Don't go for the current version
which they are planning to stop the support by 2012.

MS Dynamics AX is also a very good product and may not be that expensive and
it is very user friendly and has got a decent CRM. I believe that from a
support point of view, MS Dynamics AX will score better.

I have recently completed an evaluation exercise for one of our customers
where I happened to evaluate MS Dynamics, Infor and Lawson M3. Do let me
know if you require any assistance to comprehensively evaluate and select a
suitable ERP for your company. We have proven product selection methodology
based on Six Sigma principles and have proven customer case studies.

Hi Chandra,
Thanks for the inputs.
I am not sure if you have come across Lawson's module LBI (Lawson Business
Intelligence) which has release with the M3 7.1 version. It has very strong
BI Capabilities and the division of yours that uses Lawson is not yet on M3
7.1, so they are not using LBI. I am sure very soon they would get onto 7.1
and LBI.
As for the version, Lawson M3 7.1 version is good enough and the next
version which is version 10 would not be extraordinarily different from 7.1.

Roberto: I suggest you can take a look at Lawson M3 7.1 too and see if it
matches your requirements.
I am sure you wouldnt be disappointed.
Best Regards,
Amit Gupta.

A bit more information about the company.
Although I detail that we are a MTO/ ETO company - our annual business is in broad terms:
60% repeat business - repeating every 1-3 months
20% repeat business - repeating every 3-12 months
20% new business
We keep no inventory of finished goods and no inventory of sub assemblies.
I feel therefore that software aimed more at ETO would not fit this business model.

Roberto, the sales demos will be all very impressive. However you will learn far more from the customer visits I am sure. Make sure you only visit customers that are on the latest release of each system, and hopefully been using that version for more than 12 months (past the learning curve), afterwhich your decision should be easy.

Roberto,
You mentioned three different software companies Infor, Microsoft, and Epicor. You also stated that a prime objective of your replacement project was to reduce the risk associated the software vendor who is your ERP provider. If this is truely a major driver, then Infor & Microsoft are both considerably stronger than Epicor! It would seem that you may want to use financial strength of the companies would be your first gate which would have you down to 2 vendors. If we then look at the two vendors, with Microsoft you are looking at the Dyanmics AX (Axapta) package which is the high end of the manufacturing solutions in the Dynamics family, as such I would suggest that you look at the Infor SyteLine product which is the high end of the Infor family; or you can take the opposite tact which would be to continue with the Infor Visual solution but compare it to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) solution which is the step down from AX.
Regards,
Bill

I have assisted many companies over the last 25 years to conduct objective,
independent ERP selections. These products that you are considering can
certainly be a good fit. You might also want to consider the JDE suite
within Oracle as a good fit for steel fabrication type companies and so is
IFS. Another key factor to consider is 'the end game' what do the CxO's
of the company want? Why are they making this investment? If it is
management reporting/dashboards to give them up to the minute, quick insight
into their defined KPI's, this needs to be factored into the ERP vendor
evaluations as well. When you get a chance, review this whitepaper
http://www.arcviewassociates.com/uploads/BI_CPM_Wh itepaper_2-2009.pdfMake sure you prepare specific scripts for vendor demonstrations that are
unique to the company requirements. Don't let the vendors do their
routine demo show. Have a scoring/rating system for the proposals, costs,
demos and user site visits.
Furthermore, on the site visits, make sure to pair up your selection team members with their counterparts at the site visit companies to ask for 'what they would differently', as well as implementation 'lessons learned'.

Just to through my 2 cents in. INFOR has several ERP solutions. It will
depend on what platform you have or are willing to go to. Your final
solution will be the ERP Software and BEST FIT. If you get 90+ % of
what you want without extra cost, You found a match. Also what are the
company's future plans and directions for their software? What is their
ROI? What modifications can you make without modifying their original
code and will those changes be part of any upgrade without you making
any other redo's. Any mods you make should move forward with your
software upgrades automatically. Therefore you are not making the same
changes over and over again.

Double check your information. Although Infor has acquired many ERP solutions originally in various vendor's portfolios, Infor is not a rebranded incarnation of Macola. The last time I checked, products that originated as Macola are now owned by Exact.

Simon,
I was addressing the financial wherewithall of the three organizations as Roberto raises the concern of risk. Epicor is by far the smallest organization of the three (less than 20% of the next smallest). If you wanted to you could look into the trends of the financial results of the 3 companies, the changes in executive management, the exposure to acquistion, etc. (of which Epicor would come out on the short end), but the delta in revenue is sufficeint to validate this point.
Bill

At 10:14 AM 2/5/2010, bcary via erp-select wrote:
>I was addressing the financial wherewithall of the three
>organizations as Roberto raises the concern of risk. Epicor is by
>far the smallest organization of the three (less than 20% of the
>next smallest). If you wanted to you could look into the trends of
>the financial results of the 3 companies, the changes in executive
>management, the exposure to acquistion, etc. (of which Epicor would
>come out on the short end), but the delta in revenue is sufficeint
>to validate this point.
I'm sure all of the former users of Informix database will
be very comforted by that.

At 05:03 AM 2/5/2010, tilindia via erp-select wrote:
>We are using Oracle APPS(ERP) for last five years. We are the
>manufacturer of varieties
>heavy Crane. The module you have mentioned, all we are using most
>satisfactorily. I am
>looking after BOM and CRM modules. You can think about Oracle APPS also.
He said they're a GBP 12m company. They're not going to invest
a whole year's revenue and even more time in implementation
and still stay alive. Oracle is definitely the wrong scale here.

Interesting tact... However you should be providing facts not FUD. Epicor has many products in its portfolio inclusive of a significant retail vertical, does this mean it is the old Macola rebranded. Try to get serious in helping people.

At 03:13 PM 2/5/2010, bcary via erp-select wrote:
>Geoff,
>Not certain what the Informix reference is all about?
The falsehood is that the larger the company, the more guaranteed
its stability. All it takes is a few high level executives to
cook the books and get caught to bring it all tumbling down.
How many people bought Informix databases just because they
were so "obviously stable". And then within a month the company
is no longer in existence. In other words, things like Enron
and Arthur Anderson happen. There are no real guarantees in
the world.

Roberto,
You should consider using an experienced ERP consultant to assist you with this project. They would help you navigate this process, ensure your enterprise selects the right system that matchs the requirements and probably save you money (typically the savings on the discount they can negotiate with the vendors should more than cover their consulting fees and some).
Brad
NorvaTech
www.norva.com.au

Geoff,
Thanks for the clarification on the Informix reference. Certainly you are correct that there are no guarantees that a company will continue to operate because "stuff happens", everything from cooking the books to just plain stupid executive management solutions. However the other risks associated with doing business such as exposure to the economy, acquisition by an "unfriendly", etc. are more likely to impact a smaller organization. Additionally in the software space, the larger the organization the larger the maintenance base and therefore the value. It is this value which will help assure some continuity. In the case of Informix, they are owned & fully supported by IBM so the user community didn't do too bad...
Bill

Hi Roberto
Very interesting, I am currently involved in an ERP selection process
for a company involved in both discrete and process manufacturing. We
have identified the same range of solutions discussed here, Epicor,
Dynamics AX, Lawson M3 and JDE. The system we are looking to replace,
Infor Syteline is actually functionally rich from a manufacturing
perspective. What lets Syteline down is the database architecture, it is
not a true enterprise design. Each entity is setup as a separate
database with replication between them, which increases the management
overhead and make reporting much more difficult. Not to mention users
having to log in and out of each entity, make operating a shared service
environment very tiring.
Cheers
Dave

Dave,
I would hope that you looked into the latest version of SyteLine (which based on your comment about logging in & out for shared services, I can only assume you did not) as this would represent your most cost effective solution as you already owned the software (unless you dropped maintenance, which may be why you seem to be on an old version). As to the four suystems you mention, I have actually worked for two out of the four and I can catagorically state that the technology they deploy is considerably older and less flexible than what is offered by SyteLine. I would suggest digging into the total technology footprint of all the solutions (and compare the latest releases of each) prior to spending money needlessly.
Bill

Hi Bill
Thanks for your input. Yes we have considered a Syteline upgrade and all
things considered we decided to go to the market. In fact the local
Syteline representatives proposed LN over an upgrade which validates our
decision. Technology is certainly a factor, the solutions we are looking
at cover the range from leading edge to tried and true. In the final
analysis a vast array of factors must to be considered and cost is well
down the list.
Cheers
Dave

I have assisted many companies over the last 25 years to conduct objective,
independent ERP selections. These products that you are considering can
certainly be a good fit. You might also want to consider the JDE suite
within Oracle as a good fit for steel fabrication type companies and so is
IFS. Another key factor to consider is 'the end game' what do the CxO's
of the company want? Why are they making this investment? If it is
management reporting/dashboards to give them up to the minute, quick insight
into their defined KPI's, this needs to be factored into the ERP vendor
evaluations as well. When you get a chance, review this whitepaper
http://www.arcviewassociates.com/uploads/BI_CPM_Wh itepaper_2-2009.pdfMake sure you prepare specific scripts for vendor demonstrations that are
unique to the company requirements. Don't let the vendors do their
routine demo show. Have a scoring/rating system for the proposals, costs,
demos and user site visits.

BTW, I know a New Zealander who hosts a strong JDE implementation practice;
contact me if you have any interest.

Dave,
Just a minor point, you do realize that the Infor rep would make a considerable amount og money if you went to LN and nothing if you just upgraded to SyteLine. I would not use that as va;idation of your long term direction.
Bill

I would recommend you to try ValleySpeak Hosted Project Management Software. ValleySpeak is the creator of one of the most sophisticates hosted project management software. ValleySpeak Project Server allows project managers to continue using Microsoft project as their project management tool of choice, while allowing project managers to publish, execute and control projects in real time.

from my point of view the Microsoft Dynamics AX has the best integrated solution with all other Microsoft products. So in AX itself you have the integration e.g to outlook or excel. With the SQL Server BI Suite you get everything that is possible for reporting and OLAP Analysis. For OLAP Solutions you have with Excel2007 a real good frontend. All this solutions you could integrate in the share point server.
With Microsoft Office 2010, Share Point Server 2010, Dynamics AX 2010 all the available functionalities will expand.
So from my side I would say the ERP product with the best future should be Dynamics AX.

I think you need to look carefully at the scheduling capabilities in the
solution you select. In our experience, applications in your area, sheet
rolling, the sequence of orders can be very important. For example you may
want to sequence batches from narrow widths to wide then back again from
wide to narrow to maintain the best quality. Many of the schedulers
available do not have this type of capability so my recommendation would be
for you to submit data to the candidate ERP companies and make sure their
solution is able to meet your requirements.

You have in the UK one of the world leaders in scheduling software,
Preactor. They offer this type of functionality and it is easily integrated
with the ERP systems you are looking at. So if your ERP candidates cannot
do what you want you should call Preactor for a demonstration.

Thanks for this input. Having sat now through demos of EPICOR 9 and INFOR VISUAL I must agree that both products appear to fall short on the scheduling capabilities - standard gantt charts that would not work in a sub-contract sheet metal manufacturing environment.
As I have stated in my original post - one of my key requisites is a strong scheduling package - I would also like to capture variance in real time on any labour or material as work is produced. The solutions that I have viewed in the more recent demos and that I have worked with in the past can easily facilitate reporting historical variance and have decent margin analysis tools - but why not capture this data as it happens - eg margin analysis becomes part of the daily routine - booking excess material at the first operation should be flagged there and then - analysed then fixed. Similarly excess labour booked should be flagged there and then - analysed then fixed. My thoughts are that most companies plan to make profit on most if not all jobs - why waste time analysing this after the event - software should show this data in real time as a dashboard type facility allowing a job by job focus on margin analysis.

Roberto, You may have to look at some of the best of breed schedulling / planning software. Apart from Chris suggestion, Optisol schedulling has been much mention in this forum. Prasad Velaga would be more than glad to answer any queries.
Let us know how it goes.

I'm surprised that you feel both products fall short on the scheduling capabilities. Although few companies/users have the discipline needed to define their routings with the level of detail and accuracy needed to effectively schedule (and define their effective capacity too). The next challenge then is to capture the work accomplished (preferably via M.E.S. stations or bar code data collection so that it is captured in a timely manner) so that the scheduler knows what has been accomplished and can relieve the load and reschedule the remaining work yet to be accomplished. I'm referring to "finite capacity" scheduling. Infor Visual has one of the most capable integrated finite scheduling systems (in my opinion). That said, probably not more than 5% of licensed customers effectively use the scheduling due to the end-to-end process discipline it requires to work effectively. Your desire for real-time variance visibility is also viable as soon as the material issue transactions and the production time and produces quantity data is collected. Obviously no system can identify when excess labor time is being consumed unless the system has captured the quantity produced at an operation in addition to the time spent on the operation.

Although I'm no longer direcetly involved with Infor Visual, I did sell and support the product from 1992 - 2006 (Lilly Software owned Visual until October 24, 2004, then Infor acquirerd Lilly). Visual also understands the multi-level job structure and the relationship of material requirements to the operation at which the material is needed. We definately had customers that effectively used the scheduling tools - but again, very few had the discipline needed in defining and in reporting. More companies ultimately became interested in the Theory of Constraints and Easy Lean (Visual's form of simplified Drum Buffer Rope).

From 2007 - much of 2009 I focused on Epicor Vantage that evolved into Epicor 9. Vantage was the foundation for Epicor 9. Epicor 9 is the place where multiple Epicor ERP products converge with Vantage having been the "main artery." There are also completely new components to Epicor 9 such as the financials. They represent a major change from Vantage. The was required in order to also satisfy the needs of customers that might eventually migrate from Epicor Enterprise to Epicor 9. In my opinion - Epicor 9 is built on a consistent and up-to-date technology foundation that delivers significant capability to tailor the system to meet business needs without modifying source code. As for its scheduling capabilities - they may not be as robust as the capabilities of Infor Visual.

If you have not seen the scheduling tools capable of scheduling a contract sheet metal manufacturing environment in either Visual or Epicor 9, you probably didn't have the right pre-sales person presenting. One qualifier though - are you prepared to detail all of the unique sheared or lasered pieces in the B.O.M. with their own routing of operations and labor reporting?

Suggestion - create a multi-level job definition with no more than 20 components making up sub-assemblies and the final assembly. Define the work centers (no more than 15) that operations need to be routed through. Define whether the work centers are single machine or single person or multi-unit. Define groups including the prefered sequence of group member selection and the effective efficiency of each member of the group (if all will not produce at the same effeciency). If labor is a constraint, define operators and or set-up mechanics as resources / work centers so that they can constrain the schedule too. Associate materials with the operations (if material availability is a scheduling constraint). If material is a scheduling constraint, be sure to identify the material lead time for each material that may have insufficient availability from inventory. Define beginning balances for each material. Give this type of scripted demo detail to each vendor and ask them to build the demo. When they are on-site presenting you'll see just a job or two scheduled to the work centers they created for your scripted demo. Have them create additional jobs using the copy/add/delete/modify capabilities so that you can introduce some other jobs that will cross some of the same work centers. Play with the quantities and due dates and run the scheduler. Dive deep into the results to understand the constraints / conflicts and the tools available to you to acheive visibiltiy into your schedule and the constraints impacting it. Then see if you think your staff can effectively use scheduling tools at this level of detail.

One last suggestion - don't ask your prospective vendors to do this unless you are either committed to buying from one of them providing they can prove that their scheduling works. It's been a little more than three years since I worked intimately with the scheduling capabilities of Infor Visual. Back then its scheduling capabilities were more robust than most companies were prepared to use. There becomes a point of deminishing return on effort invested. Just because a system will support complex scheduling, it doesn't mean utilizing all of its capabilities makes sense.

Your observation on scheduling capabilities of Epicor and VISUAL may apply to a majority of ERP packages for manufacturing. But, I guess VISUAL offers more than standard Gantt charts for intelligent production scheduling in custom manufacturing. A lot of dependence on Gantt chart gimmicks (by drag-and-drop operations) and historical averages and variance could sometimes be an indication of the absence of rigorous scheduling logic.

I guess you are looking for fast and powerful what-if analysis capability for efficient decision-making in production on a regular basis. You should be able to generate a practical and rational schedule for the entire production fast enough to have a meaningful discussion in production meetings. You naturally want to extract the maximum throughput from the available resources. This is supposed to be one of the objectives of "resource planning". The best-of-breed scheduling tools offered by third party vendors can be of great help in this regard. People like you would be greatly benefited if ERP vendors and scheduling tool vendors forge partnerships.

In one of your earlier posts, you said 80% of the orders are repetitive. But, the uncertain ordering times, customer-specified lead times and the continuous changes in product mix resulting from the uncertainty can make production management pretty complex. I can offer some additional information when you look for a best-of-breed production scheduling tool.

Visual has the most complete imbedded realtime scheduling capabilities of
any popular ERP package, . designed to comply with the TOC and DBR
philosophies of Goldratt and Fox. In a message dated 2/10/2010 10:19:36 A.M.
Eastern Standard Time, email@removed writes:

(http://it.toolbox.com/trd/9/1/226236) Posted by _Prasad Velaga_
(http://it.toolbox.com/trd/9/1/226236)on Feb 10 at 10:09 AM _Mark as helpful_
(http://it.toolbox.com/api/ContentVote/3297803/1/1/ )Roberto,
Your observation on scheduling capabilities of Epicor and VISUAL may apply
to a majority of ERP packages for manufacturing. But, I guess VISUAL
offers more than standard Gantt charts for intelligent production scheduling in
custom manufacturing. A lot of dependence on Gantt chart gimmicks (by
drag-and-drop operations) and historical averages and variance could sometimes
be an indication of the absence of rigorous scheduling logic.
I guess you are looking for fast and powerful what-if analysis capability
for efficient decision-making in production on a regular basis. You should
be able to generate a practical and rational schedule for the entire
production fast enough to have a meaningful discussion in production meetings.
You naturally want to extract the maximum throughput from the available
resources. This is supposed to be one of the objectives of "resource planning".
The best-of-breed scheduling tools offered by third party vendors can be of
great help in this regard. People like you would be greatly benefited if
ERP vendors and scheduling tool vendors forge partnerships.
In one of your earlier posts, you said 80% of the orders are repetitive.
But, the uncertain ordering times, customer-specified lead times and the
continuous changes in product mix resulting from the uncertainty can make
production management pretty complex. I can offer some additional information
when you look for a best-of-breed production scheduling tool.
Regards
Prasad ( www.optisol.biz )

I have good respect for VISUAL's scheduling capability but I don't think I can use superlative words for its scheduling power in custom manufacturing. A few months ago, an aerospace company using VISUAL ERP wanted to switch from infinite capacity loading to finite capacity loading. They invited a true expert on VISUAL scheduler for a week for help and paid a good amount of money for his services. Andy knows him well. I heard that they are still manually doing production scheduling in Excel sheets. This company liked our best-of-breed scheduling tool very much but did not buy it because they did not want to incur some more money on scheduling functionality.

Have you ever seen closely a best-of-breed scheduling tool that can generate a schedule "within seconds" for tens of thousands of operations subject to all constraints such that the schedule makes some sense on shop floor? If you have done it, you would not heap praise on the scheduling capability of any ERP system.

Manufacturers are increasingly adopting shop floor data collection systems for tracking jobs and making real time decisions (as part of firefighting) without good prediction of workflow and bottlenecks. A good scheduling tool can exploit those systems for efficient management of custom production.

I've gone through some of the AX training about 3 years ago. I felt the UI
was stunningly confusing. Nothing at all seemed intuitive relative to
windows standards. Buttons on forms that would pop up and show 40+ options
with 15+ submenus. Maybe things have changed.

Perhaps you might actually be looking more for a project scheduling system. One that has capacity planning but also takes into account subcontract and material lead times as critical mileposts. I have dealt with a lot of metal bashers in my career and I have found your type of company is dealing with an engineered job each time. You might want to take into account the time and effort in the presales/quote phase and in the design/engineering phase. Do you need to track critical mileposts like customer or architect apporvals? These are some of the critical mileposts APS software doesn't typically don't track as it is not production related.

My suggestion is perhaps take a different tact. I would investigate SAP Business One with Trimergo B2. This is a product suite being used be a couple of hundred companies building ships, structural steel, overhead cranes etc. www.trimergo.com

Look it over and if you would like more direction on who to speak with let me know.

Planettogether is a very modern and sophisticated scheduling application. It runs rings around VISUAL or any of the onboard APS products offered by ERP vendors. I spent many years as a scheduling guru selling VISUAL. I still like the product but there are newer offerings that offer a more intuitive interface.

Visual and Epicor are good products. It has been about five year since I have used Visual as an end users. Much of want you are looking for can be found in a majority of systems. However, I would put ProfitKey International's RRM/MES System up against any one these three.

ProfitKey International has been providing ERP software for discrete manufacturers for more than a quarter century. They develop, market and support manufacturing software, information and control systems, for make-to-order,engineer-to-order and make-to-stock manufacturers. ProfitKey?s Rapid Response Manufacturing (RRM) system is a highly integrated ERP/MES family of products that emphasizes finite/infinite scheduling, capacity management, cost management, real time data collection and eCommerce collaborative communication with suppliers/vendors. They also work with hundreds of shops and manufacturing facilities to increase efficiencies that ultimately turn into profits.

Prasad,
There are several ERP solutons that offer traditional scheduling, true APS scheduling, and Project Management; from which the customer may select which is the correct tool for that event at this point in time (i.e. they are not mutually exclusive). The advantage of the embedded solution is one of integration to the balance of the ERP suite, and the reduced maintenance of having to deal with only one solution. Best of breed point solutions are great for organizations that are adding to what they already have in house and don't wish to "throw the baby out with the bathwater", but if you are starting from scratch look around for a system that handles all your business processes!
Regards,
Bill

Roberto,
You raise a couple of interesting points that have different responses based on what type of manufacturing you really do. If you are a custom manufacturer then you are buying for the job and all material is applied to the job as part of the cost. If you are a repetative manufacturer are you planning for scrap and is that issued at the initial operations, what happens if you do better than expected or worse than expected? If you issue based on reels (i.e. electronics) is the entire reel issued with the remainder returned, or do you just issue the exact amount though the reel is removed from stores? The questions go on and on, and the answers to these are what changes how an organization might look at metrics. With that said, if you can define the rules many of the solutions will allow you to do what you are asking for via their work flow engines (some are easier than others to set up) and a few can add real time dashboards to reflect the defined KPIs (i.e. jobs with excess labor booked, jobs with excess material greater than 10% of the standard value, etc.). The only caveat is be careful what you ask for as you could be inundated with events that are triggered from your KPIs. I'm certain if you ask the three software vendors you are considering to address this for you, they will all show you varying amounts of compliance to these points. You just have to define what it is you really require to ascertain who can best deliver it to you!
Regards,
Bill

Toolbox erp-selectRoberto,
You are getting a lot of suggestions about features and functions on this site but not sure features and functions are what this companies executives are going to be looking for. I think they are looking to solve business problems and need a system that brings them the most business value?
Here are some of the questions I see asking:
What are the top 5 business priorities for this company this year?
How has the business changed in the last 3 years?
What do they see as critical issues facing the company?
What are the critical issues costing them in time, lost opportunities, money, frustrations?
What changes are they going to make during the next 3 years?
To be successful, what are the major tasks which will have to be accomplished?
What would prevent them from being successful in making these changes?
What are they going to need to ensure the changes are implemented swiftly and correctly?
What type of performance measures are they held accountable to?
Why have they been successful in the past?
What is the justification process for this project?
I could think of a lot more.
Mike Taylor
email@removed

You'll find a wealth of information on the Jobscope website all related to your questions. The software focuses on project-based manufacturing. There is also a local representation in the UK if you'd like more in-person communications.

You can sort the +/-150 case studies on the Preactor website by ERP company
to see that Prasad's point about the shortfall in capability of inbuilt
scheduling solutions holds true. Generally companies only make use of
external scheduling solutions when the internal solution cannot provide the
functionality required, so each case study also implies that prior outcomes
were unsatisfactory.

That said, the need for 'intelligent' scheduling functionality is a function
of scheduling volume (the number of things to schedule) and / or schedule
complexity and / or the dynamism of the manufacturing environment (how
frequently does the schedule need to change). Low volume, low schedule
complexity and steady schedules are easily managed with simpler scheduling
tools. If any of these are on the high side i.e. result in hours of manual
work to construct a schedule, consider that you may need to make use of a
focused scheduling solution. Scheduling complexity is generally the area not
well catered for in ERP scheduling solutions.

The issue of 'effort' required to maintain data to use scheduling
functionality is a bit of mis-direction concerning this task. In my
experience data never gets corrected unless it is in regular use. As soon as
you measure the operator / foreman against the value in the routing or BOM
he will tell you where it needs correcting. This happens over time and
generally does not require any additional 'effort'. It does require that you
implement a shop floor feedback system that records actual against plan as
it occurs and systems to maintain and correct the routing detail as it is
reported.

The issue about the scheduling solution having to be part of the ERP
solution is a combination of salesman FUD and ideology, as the following
will show. Spreadsheets are modelling solutions and the majority of
companies with ERP systems, if not all, make use of them to process data
found in the ERP system. Many manufacturing companies make use of
spreadsheets to model the manufacturing operations and generate schedules
that the ERP system is unable to provide. The same salesman who tells you
how easily it is to extract data from their ERP system for use in a
spreadsheet will tell you that you shouldn't extract data from the ERP
system to model in a scheduling solution, as the scheduling function should
be part of the ERP solution for integration reasons. The ideology bit comes
when people stick to this policy even if it costs money (see Prasad's
example) just because the finite scheduler module is not termed a
spreadsheet. The scheduling solution has exactly the same intent viz. to
create a view of the factory load if you apply rules to the data found in
the ERP system. The real issue isn't about where you model the data but
about where you store the details required for the model. It is preferable
to keep and maintain the data in the ERP system to ensure everybody uses
the same set of data. One of the reasons in-built scheduling solutions fail
is that the routing structures are often not flexible enough to reflect the
manufacturing process choices the company has and needs to consider when
developing a schedule.

All manufacturing companies generate schedules and expend effort on doing
so. Intelligent scheduling solutions reduce the effort considerably. A
reduction of 80% of the scheduling effort, as a result of installing an
intelligent scheduler, is not uncommon.

One of your visions is the ability to get immediate and on-going analysis of
costs of jobs in progress. You indicated that the company you work for is a
make-to-order and design-to-order company that make subassemblies. I assume
that subassemblies are made to support the shipment of the end product i.e.
sub-assemblies are seldom shared between customer orders. If this is the
case you might want to consider the way you structure your BOM and routing
details. Most manufacturing companies structure their BOM in a hierarchical
manner to achieve this. An example will explain the issue here. You needs
parts A and B to make sub-assembly C and parts D and E to make sub-assembly
F. You then take C and F and create G. In the ERP system you create a BOM
showing the G is made from C and F and that they in turn are made from A and
B and D and E. To make G you open a production orders for C, F and G. You
book in C and F and then issue them immediately to make G. This process
requires admin overhead. If you structured your routing as a project you
could open 1 order and avoid the superfluous receipt and issue transactions.
It also allows you to get an overview of the complete job at any step in its
progress. This overview capability is generally not available in a
hierarchical structure as visibility is only available at the individual job
level and not the total job. To gain the benefits from this structure you
need the ERP system to allow you to create a project structure, the
scheduling functionality to schedule it correctly and a shop floor tracking
system to keep you up to date with progress in the various legs. As the data
is 'current' you can identify and possibly resolve problem issues
'immediately'.

Tracking detail against a job is more about the timeousness of the
transaction and not so much about how you manage situations like
over-issues. Not all transactions need to go through the shop floor tracking
function e.g. the issues receipt transactions would normally be recorded in
the inventory module of the ERP solution. ERP tracking systems often track
the status change of the operation e.g. started or complete, but not the
time the operation started or if it has been paused pending some problem.
The start and end times are needed to position operations in the schedule
and the lost time elements for you to understand the difference between
duration and work expended. Ask your ERP vendor how they cater for shop
floor tracking, determine if it captures the details that you want tracked
and, if not, if it can be extended. I suspect that you will need to look
outside the ERP solution for a flexible tracking solution.

As for selecting the ERP solution, I support the recommendations that
advocate you pick a partner that has both domain and product knowledge and
find a solution that appears to cater for your industry's needs and your
company's growth needs. I have reservations about industrial tourism.
Companies use the same product in very different ways and the majority will
profess to be happy with their solution. You might as well ask them if they
use the same spreadsheet as your company and if they are happy with it. When
you get back to home ground try and work out what value the answer was in
your decision process.

My opinion is that if you restrict your selection process to only what a
single ERP solution provider can offer you might fall short of achieving
your vision, especially if it requires intelligent scheduling and shop floor
tracking to create the 'live' system you wish to operate.

Well said Chris, I couldn't agree more.
It is often not necessary to be all from the same software. In real life
this is not often as idealistic as ones think. Any person with a couple of
years experiences in ERP implementation will quickly find out.
That is why there are going to be more collaborations between the Best of
Breed APS with the traditional ERP providers such as Sage, Sap, Microsoft,
etc. And any ERP consultant worth its salt would have no objection to these
collaborations best of both worlds.
Cheers!

Chris,
Interesting points, first you trash salespeople and then you proceed to sell your product. Then you attack ERP solutions as not being able to provide planning functions (they all have their customers performing planning on spreadsheets outside the system) and use the fact that you have 150 case studies to back it up (out of the 100,000s of thousand if not millions of ERP solutions that are deployed). Then you site specific examples such as a multilevel BOM creating excessive administrative overhead, which if a true concern can easily be addressed by utilizing phantoms; then you indicate that ERP solutions don't allow for clocking on and off, which many do and also allow for indicating if it is set up - run time - indirect time - team reporting - etc. Seems like your facts are somewhat off, and that you are selling your solution too hard.
Bill

If you truly have the impression that VISUAL?s scheduling capabilities fall short in sheet metal manufacturing, whoever has presented VISUAL scheduling to you, did you and your company a tremendous disservice!

Did they show you the audit capabilities in the scheduler that eliminate ?black box? mysteries as to how the schedule was created? Did they show you the What-if capabilities that allow you to promise accurate delivery dates in real-time either while quoting or placing an order? Did they show you the Throughput window that shows you how much money will be flowing to your bottom-line in a future time period (week, month, quarter, or longer) based upon your current production plan or on an unlimited number of what-if schedules? Did they tell you about the optional Lean Scheduling that eliminates all the ?noise? and ?nervousness? of any Finite Scheduling tool due to ?Murphy?? I.e., once you get your beautiful picture of future reality created by the Finite Schedule, something out of your control will occur (customer changes due dates, machine breaks down, key setup personnel don?t show up, etc, etc.) and the beautiful picture suddenly becomes cloudy and not at all believable (that, by the way, is the reason why Finite Scheduling, no matter how good a program or software, rarely helps manufacturers deliver on-time, never mind actually improve their customer service levels). Did they tell you that customers that implement this Lean Scheduling module on average realize a 50% drop in WIP, a similar decrease in manufacturing and quoted leadtimes to their customers, and the resultant increases in productivity and profitability that those achievements drive?within 2 -3 months??

If not, shame on them! But don?t believe me. As others here suggest, ask VISUAL?s customers who?ve implemented it. You can download several scheduling testimonials from our website at SynergyResources.net. If you want a real scheduling presentation of VISUAL please contact me. If you?re not in our area, we?ll make sure you get the right resources from your local Channel Partner and/or Infor to give a true look at VISUAL?s scheduling capabilities.

By the way, with all due respect to the fellow from Profitkey ? my dad founded that company in 1980 before founding Lilly Software and releasing VISUAL in 1992 ? VISUAL has all the functionality Profitkey does from a scheduling standpoint, plus more than some.

I know that it takes a knowledgeable person to present a demo of an ERP scheduling module more effectively, particularly for custom manufacturing. But, there is certainly one thing that a knowledgeable person would not do normally. He may not give you an accurate percentage of happy users among all people who purchased the scheduling module. He wants you to look at the glorious side of the module through selected testimonials without bothering about the percentage of failures. He feeds you a biased information about the user experience. For example, if the overall percentage of happy users (of an scheduling module) is only 20% for an ERP package, where is the guarantee that you would not fall into the unfortunate 80% later? There could be several possible reasons for failure and all those cannot be attributed to the vendor. In such cases, you could become one more experimental unit. For this reason, we offer a free trial version of our best-of-breed scheduling tool for a month or two so that the potential clients can see its real practical value for themselves in their own company. But, the user has to make some efforts to collect the required information about his production system and prepare datasets. The users of trial version can reject our tool without any loss if the application is not satisfactory for ANY reason. Mark Lilly's criticism of Finite Scheduling software can also be verified during the trial implementation.

It is indeed unfortunate that you did not get a chance to personally meet
any of the Lilly people in our heyday. You have an obvious bias that a
sales person cannot be knowledgeable and honest at the same time. We were
required to take extensive Goldratt classes and be able to show to the
prospect his data in the scheduler (entry to completion) and take the prospect
to a similar customer running the scheduler before Dick Lilly would accept
the deal. So our solution, like yours, was also customer centric and
time tested in the knowledge that a good scheduling reference was invaluable
to our message. I do not know your product, but in the past have
competed with stand alone scheduling packages like Preactor, Waterloo, Asprova,
Capterra, Prestige, etc. Bottom line, our best of breed integrated
scheduling solution won every time. Why, because we had the best software, the
best implementers and offered a money back guarantee that we would meet the
customers needs, whether or not they knew exactly what they wanted .
Enough said?
I

Pointing out the use of the tactic of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt
(FUD) concerning the benefits of integrated modules vs. the use of BoB
solutions, by sales people or that most don't realise that the spreadsheet
and scheduling solution can be grouped as modelling programs, can hardly be
considered as trashing them.

I did not write that that 'all' ERP manufacturing users use spreadsheets for
planning. I accept without reservation that some manufactures get excellent
value from their inbuilt scheduling solutions. This thread has however a
number of references to the difficulties associated with, and limited
success of, installing inbuilt scheduling solutions, enough to warrant
Roberto reviewing the offerings being made to him with caution.

There are a number of ERP solutions that have limited or no inbuilt shop
floor feedback functionality and make use of third party solutions to
achieve this, SAP B1 probably being a good example. Not all of these are
created equal. Roberto has already indicated that he is not finding the
functionality he expects.

I am not involved in any form of sale to Roberto. I have suggested that he
look at Preactor, which has its head office in the UK where Roberto finds
himself, as a possible scheduling solution if the functionality being
offered doesn't meet his needs.

Lastly, your suggestion of adding phantoms to the BOM to create a single
production order, does not result in the 'low admin' technique that I was
trying to explain to Roberto and may result in loss of control within
operations. Recapping and adding to the example of my previous email
explains this more clearly.

Assume that a company needs to make an end product G from 4 purchased
components A, B, D, and E. The foreman in production doesn't need the BOM to
be structured to show that A plus B makes C and that D plus E makes F and
that C and F make G. The structure is obvious from the drawing. The benefit
of segmenting the BOM lies in management control. Each time production
finishes a piece they booked it in and out of stock. These transactions give
management a view into and control over production activities. The cost of
this control is the need to open production orders for sub-assemblies,
process superfluous transactions and maintain the BOM structure. A segmented
BOM does not easily give a view of progress of cost build up against the
entire job as these are recorded at individual job level. Automated shop
floor feedback gives management a more timeous view of the progress of
individual operations and jobs but does not really add to understanding of
the progress of the entire job. Scheduling solutions / project management
software via their Gantt charts give visibility of progress of individual
jobs, and if the scheduling functionality links jobs between levels, the
entire job. Phantoms drop the generation of multiple jobs but UNLESS they
generate a 'project' routing structure don't indicate which operations can
be done in parallel or where operation precedence exists. Dropping a single
order with a long list of operations which can be completed in any sequence
will not provide management control. The question is why incur the admin
overhead of segmenting the BOM, generating multiple works orders and
processing superfluous transactions if you can create a single structure
with a project routing, use the tracking system to tell you where it is in
production and a scheduling solution to tell you the projected completion of
the entire job. Users of ERP software that are based around projects have
being doing this for years and are probably wondering what the issue is
about. The issue is that standard project management software is a very poor
fit for the control and scheduling of general manufacturing operations on a
daily basis.

The technique explained above will give Roberto immediacy concerning the
status of the whole job both from a cost, progress and expected completion
perspective and allow him to reduce the admin cost associated with BOM
segmentation (including the need to manage phantoms), the generation and
tracking of multiple jobs and processing of superfluous transactions. The
implementation of the technique requires the ERP system to offer project
routing functionality, that shop floor tracking be implemented and used and
that the job progress be made visible by the scheduling functionality. The
non-availability or poor use of any of these core sets of functionality will
probably lead to 'Low Admin' technique failure. This technique can be mixed
with BOM segmentation practices and adopted at the organisations pace.

Having had some experience in this area (designed and implemented a shop
floor planning and control system using a IBM 710 computer in 1967) and
having seen several presentations since of such systems on more contemporary
platforms, I am curious as to your opinion on which of the three ERP
packages you list does the best job of solving this issues you sight.
Paul Ames
A sometimes participant in this discussion site.

Toolbox erp-select
Paul,
Without any bias, I tend to think that Infor VISUAL is relatively the best among the three systems for shop floor scheduling. It is based on some general information gathered during conversations with industry folks. I may be wrong. I always feel Infor VISUAL is worth my criticism.

Don't fall for the 60-day trial offer. Every one of us here knows that a successful ERP implementation requires discipline and management commitment. Ollie Wight listed this as the most important requirement for a successful ERP (then MRP back in the 1960's) implementation, and without it, a guarantee for failure. This is even more true for implementing a software tool that will determine your plant floor schedule and it's delivery performance. How can there possibly be Management Commitment to making something work, if you're still undecided as to whether or not it's a fit for you?

If you want to get it inhouse and play with it for a couple months, great. We can offer similar things. But you'll never see the symptoms of Finite Scheduling I describe until Manangement has fully committed to it's implementation and your company is live with it, using real workorders, real PO's, real customers calling and changing dates, real machines breaking down, real quality problems rearing their ugly heads, real vendors missing material delivery dates, real people missing work, etc. In a simulation, all this really doesn't matter.

Dramatically improving your companies delivery (and financial) performance by implementing a best of breed scheduling methodology is not something that can be proved out only with a simulation. This can be helpful in understanding the methods and how they will be applied in your particular environment. But nothing should take the place of speaking to and visiting other companies like yours that have already walked down the path.

I need to defend myself against your criticism of 60-day trial period. We do not offer a free trial version for simulations with sample data. We ask potential clients to use the tool on shop floor regularly with "real workorders, real PO's, real customers calling and changing dates, real machines breaking down, real quality problems rearing their ugly heads, real vendors missing material delivery dates, real people missing work, etc". Every thing considered in our trials is very REAL. Our potential clients do not simulate production system using our tool. I would provide references if you cannot believe it.

I am sure such trials on REAL shop floor give better confidence when our clients have to make an investment without being sure of the percentage of happy users among all people who purchased our tool. The potential clients can ignore the tool without any loss if the tool is unsatisfactory on shop floor for ANY reason during 60-day trial period. First of all, we do not even offer a free trial version if we are not sure of success.

Thanks for your reply. You're making my point exactly. If the company is already committed enough to go fully live - even for just 60 days - with your product, then "trial" is really a misnomer and what you're doing is just providing financial terms and/or a money-back guarantee.

Based upon your self-description, I suggest your firm review NAV instead of AX. Several reasons, but primary is that there is a larger number of end users and resellers in your region of the NAV product. NAV also has more "out of the box" functionality for the manufacturing suite. We have implemented NAV in two sheet metal firms in the U.S. and they are happy with the results. I believe this will be an easier and more cost effective solution should you choose Dynamics.

I do have to agree with Mark on this point. A "free trial" offer based on going live with actual data is designed to have an organization go through all the effort of adopting new business processes, training employees, converting data, etc. This is all the effort associated with a "real implementation" and where most of the cost resides. The expectation is that once most companies become "half pregnant" it is too late to go back. No one wants to go to their manager and say that they made a mistake and cost the company 2 months of all the resources required to make a system work. This is a marketing ploy that is used by several organizations, but it doesn't do a thing to assure your forward success.

Do your due diligence up front, do your proof of concept, check the references, and then roll forward with the system you are 100% committed to make a success...
Bill

When there is no authentic, verifiable evidence that a scheduling module has more than 20% of happy users, an adventure with "free trials" is less risky. In my view, the vendor must share the risk of wasting time and effort on scheduling module implementation when its "success rate" is not fully known to new clients. It gives more confidence to potential clients. A few references provide nice success stories but they cannot indicate the overall failure rate of a scheduling module. This applies to every vendor who cannot not reveal a verifiable percentage of happy users.

Based upon Roberto's self-description, it is next to impossible to recommend one specific ERP over another.
And in regards to Microsoft's offerings, there are definately more resellers of NAV than there is of AX.
However just because you have implemented it at a few sheet metal facilities, does not mean that NAV is better suited for manufacturers than AX. In fact according to The Gartner Group, your comment that NAV has more "out of the box" manufacturing functionality is just not true.
This following quote is directly out of The Gartner Group's latest Magic Quadrant report: "Microsoft Dynamics NAV is better-suited for distribution and light assembly manufacturing scenarios, but its production modules are significantly weaker than Microsoft Dynamics AX and other midsize manufacturing and distribution ERP solutions."
Opinions are just opinions,
Andy Pratico
AC: 604-505-4409

We were in pretty much the same situation last year and got down to Epicor Vantage as the preferred solution.

The feeling in the team was that it met our make-to-order processes best of the products we looked at (over 10 to begin with but Epicor, Infor, AX and MFGPro in the end).

It seems that scheduling is your main concern, and from that point of view it suits us fine ? the ?multi level jobs? gave us visibility and control of the full assembly without the need for phantoms etc. From a stock and accounts point of view they were all pretty much the same, but we did think it was the most flexible and liked the idea of dealing direct with the author.

John, it sounds like you are happy with your selection and implementation. Are there any words of wisdom or steps you would have done differently during your selection and implementation, now that you know better?
Andy Pratico
C: 604-505-4409

One observation on the fundamentals of the questions being laid down in this thread.
"Failures" to successfully deploy scheduling solutions is very often caused by the fragility or lack of currency in the underlying data being processed by the scheduling logic.
Everybody wants the gannt charts, the drag and drop shift, and the apparant agility in planning offered. Very few are prepared to create the required depth of data, and even fewer prepared to keep it current to reflect current times for set , process and transfer, yield, efficiency and several other attributes called within any scheduler. Indeed moves towards Lean have resulted in this data just not being managed at all in many businesses. Yet they still need to plan.
I suggest that anyone who has failed to get scheduling operating satisfactorily should look at and understand the importance and usage within the tool of these critical areas first, and only when satisifed in their data quality should the solution capability be then targeted.
Even the most average scheduling solution can be made to provide good service to a business if the data quality and content is maintained at a high level.

Not to get into the specifics of this argument, but god I hate when Gartner
is quoted. The way the industry and buyers value their opinion blows me
away. You could wall paper a room with their 'predictions' which seem to
coincide with large paid reports they are commissioned to do by companies.

Where to start.

Everybody will own a tablet ..2002
Everybody will have CRM by 1999
Everybody will be hosted 1998
RFID or die, 2003

On and on and on. Maybe if you just add 10 years to each of their 'next
year' predictions, they will eventually be right sometimes.

Their magic quadrants currently look like they are having a slobbering love
affair with a SAAS offering. Hell, they even liked SAP Business ByDesign 2
years ago, when you couldn't run the local pizzeria on it.

They get coddled and schmoozed by the bigger companies, and the higher the
shelf of liquor they are fed, the higher the dot in the 'quadrant' it seems.

What percent of AX customers are happy to very happy with their
implementations and software per promises versus NAV? That's the real
question.

Gartner is the 5000 lb elephant in the room and consuming all in its path
(AMR, Burton, etc.). Like it or not, you probably will not get a Fortune
1000 deal, or an large international deal without crossing paths at some
time. Best to make nice and accept their right to occasionally be
misinformed.

Roberto,
Shame on me. I didn?t realize until after I had posted that you were in the UK, and that I know the folks who presented to you well, know they are true professionals in every sense of the word, and that the style of my response could leave the wrong impression. My intent was in no way to demean them or make a commentary on their knowledge or capabilities as business software consultants.

I was confused, however, by your impression with regards to VISUAL and its scheduling capabilities. At times, if we haven?t done a thorough enough job of presenting our key differentiators, we can get a ?All the software I?ve seen looks alike, any of them would work for me? type of response. But your impression that it didn?t look like it fit your industry really floored me. If there is any industry for which VISUAL is best-suited ? and there are many that it fits very well ? it is yours.

I hope you?ll do yourself (and me) the favor of inviting your local VISUAL channel partner back in for a more thorough, deeper look at VISUAL Scheduling and Throughput and how they can help your business. I?m very confident you won?t be disappointed.

My father, Dick Lilly, has a very long history with Scheduling and Throughput and helping manufacturing companies improve their financial and delivery performance as a result. He literally wrote the book on it, ?Road to Manufacturing Success: Common Sense Throughput Solutions for Small Business?.

At 12:31 PM 2/16/2010, eXman via erp-select wrote:
>Gartner is the 5000 lb elephant in the room and consuming all in its path
>(AMR, Burton, etc.). Like it or not, you probably will not get a Fortune
>1000 deal, or an large international deal without crossing paths at some
>time. Best to make nice and accept their right to occasionally be
>misinformed.
>_.____.
I think that's a vast over exaggeration. You may come
away with that impression if it's only the Fortune 25
you deal. But the more there's consolidation in those
players, the more people are realizing there isn't
that kind of value any more. And for the mid-market,
even the higher end of it, in these economies they're
even further discounting such "research" firms. More
and more IT execs are being held accountable - and
reliance on outsiders isn't saving their jobs any more.
I'd say their more like a 500lb baby elephant seen less
and less and only the biggest companies. They've just
been too much of a failure. (although their M&A activity
portrayed as a big player is quite accurate)

At 04:35 AM 2/16/2010, John Walsh via erp-select wrote:
>One observation on the fundamentals of the questions being laid down
>in this thread.
>"Failures" to successfully deploy scheduling solutions is very often
>caused by the fragility or lack of currency in the underlying data
>being processed by the scheduling logic.
>Everybody wants the gannt charts, the drag and drop shift, and the
>apparant agility in planning offered. Very few are prepared to
>create the required depth of data, and even fewer prepared to keep
>it current to reflect current times for set , process and transfer,
>yield, efficiency and several other attributes called within any
>scheduler. Indeed moves towards Lean have resulted in this data just
>not being managed at all in many businesses. Yet they still need to plan.
>I suggest that anyone who has failed to get scheduling operating
>satisfactorily should look at and understand the importance and
>usage within the tool of these critical areas first, and only when
>satisifed in their data quality should the solution capability be
>then targeted.
>Even the most average scheduling solution can be made to provide
>good service to a business if the data quality and content is
>maintained at a high level.
Good point of how you get your data. I almost mentioned it before
when the original post brought up dashboards as well - I've recently
seen a product called ManuVis that does direct data collection off
the machines. And then it feeds that into dashboards/BI/ERP scheduling.
It's one of the ways to ensure that data quality. It also is a
really slick looking product.

Fortunately I don't sell to that demographic and its why after a few year
stint working for IBM, I decided I could never cut in in 'big corporate.'
The group think and CYA/politics attitude drove me insane.

At this stage certainly my intention is to view all short listed vendors at various reference sites to further assess their capabilities.

Should the short list stay in tact, each vendor will be asked to perform scripted demos covering key requisites for my company. At this stage I will make a huge step forward in terms of partner selection.

One of the key features to be put under the spotlight will be scheduling and capacity planning - I look forward to seeing up close how "VISUAL is best-suited" and how "there are many ways that it fits very well".

The important bit for me here is change. I plan to tailor departments, tailor company structure, company procedures to embrace and enhance the ERP software. If I do not select the best fit this marriage will never work.

Infor VISUAL, EPICOR and MS Dynamics AX have all submitted budget quotes. The variance is far greater than I expected. I guess what I am looking for here is a guide to project time scale. One vendor has quoted 36 days, one 51 days and one 96 days - all for the same project in the same company.

From my earlier post, my company is very much an SME looking to fully implement a new ERP system - migrating from a 25 year old DOS-based system. We plan to go live with circa 30 users.

I apologize for coming late to this discussion, but I would be curious to see if you have reviewed Invera http://www.invera.com/. They have an ERP product specifically built for steel/steel processing industry.

I have over 12 years experience in the steel/steel processing industry and helped a client implement Stelplan (the original product) about 9 years ago, so it has a history. At the time it was a very capable product, and the support was good.

More to your point about implementation time:

Unfortunately I would never recommend you use the numbers presented by the VENDORS for YOUR implementation. The reason being is they have competing requirements.

They are trying to balance the cost of software with cost of implementation and provide an appetizing proposal.

Most companies that I come across that are implementing ERP for the first time, (which it appears you are doing, moving from a DOS system) underestimate the requirements or resources, and have not defined what IMPLEMENTED means. This allows the vendors to have a very loose interpretation when they say IMPLEMENTED.

Have any of the Vendors interviewed your ERP implementation team, or end users to assess their skills and abilities? Have they worked with you to let you know exactly what will occur during the implementation and what time commitments are required from the team, the steering committee ? More than likely not. Without this information you will be provided with a cookie cutter plan that is one size fits most.

The best bet is to get an INDEPENDENT ERP consultant to work with you to create a project plan for implementation so you get a feel for what can be accomplished realistically. At a minimum have the consultant work with you to review the vendor plans to ensure that it meets your needs.

Roberto,
You should lay the three quotes out side by side and see where they are placing the days (not the dollars). Some types of functions are system specific (examples are time to install the software, time to set system parameters, etc.) while other days are not system dependant (examples are time to support conference room pilots, time to support the go live). If you look at the non system specific times you will have a good idea of the level of support being offered by the solutions (not the level of effort demanded by the software). As another data point, you can also ask the references how much time it took to implement their systems. A metric to look at when talking to the references is what was the cost of their software compared to the cost of their implementation. Did they spend $1 on implementation for every $1 of software (a 1 to 1 ratio) or did they spend $3 on implementation for every $1 of software (a 3 to 1 ratio). See what the norm is for each of the vendors. This will give you a good idea if you are being quoted a realistic number (your quote should be within 20% of what you found to be the norm).

With that said, based on the three solution partners, the Dynamics AX has to be the one that is quoting the most days (you will find that their ratio is the highest by far of the three) as they have more "overhead" during the deployment. You will probably find some discrepancy in the level of support for non system related activities that will bring the other two closer together (just remember someone has to do this work). Then you need to look at what level of support personnel are they willing to commit to your project. If I am quoting a junior person it will take longer to do a task than if I am quoting a senior person. Ask each vendor to commit to the individuals that will be doing the implementation, define what their roles are, and give you their experience with the proposed software (not different software) and with total experience for the tasks they are being assigned. If one of the vendors will not commit to who your implementation team will be, cross them off the list and consider the other two. This is where all the risk is in your decision, make sure you are covered.

The different vendors that you're dealing with probably have different
ideas on what it will take to get you "live". For example, one vendor
may be budgeting a considerable amount of time to clean the data during
the data conversion stage (remove old vendors, customers, consolidate
like inventory parts, etc.), while the others may not be. Training also
tends to vary from vendor to vendor. It isn't uncommon for companies
that acquire a new ERP system to run the new and old systems in parallel
for a month to verify system integrity... the 36-day quote probably
isn't including that.

Given your situation with PROMAN, it's likely that the vendors tried to
quote the fastest implementation possible, but it's good to note that
faster isn't always better. Here's what I would do: get an
implementation plan from each of the vendors. Take the elements from
each that seem appropriate for your implementation and combine them into
a new implementation plan, then submit that to each of the vendors for a
re-quote. That way, you will have as close to apples-to-apples
timelines as possible.

Are any of the vendors offering to do the project for a fixed fee or budget? If one or more of the vendors are offering that as a condition of sale could explain part of the price difference. Any contract like that will have a lot contingency built into it.

If the highest estimate is for AX, this would be consistent with my experience in the market. Based on my background in the ERP industry I think a project of your size and scope (based on the little detail I have) should expect a budget of 40-60 days for implementation services. The pitfalls here are 1- if the project is too complex or takes too much time it will fail or drag out for months. 2- if you minimize your budget then the project winds up under scope or underimplemented. There is a certain critical mass that is required to successfully implement software and to see a proper ROI.

I have seen too many clients lowball their budget for services so they either never get properly implemented or have a very costly "phase" 2. They wind up being targets for ERP sales people in 3-4 years once the staff hate the current system enough. Software by itself provides any benefit to a company, the benefit comes from its proper use by the business. Software is like a complex machine, if you never figure out how to use it, at best it is a fancy lawn statue. ERP software is only as good as what the staff does with the information it provides.

I agree with the comments about comparing the project plans from each vendor. You want to make sure that one is not offering to do an install and some training while the others are prepared to walk you thru the proven steps for a successful cutover. You should expect to take the number of hours quoted by your vendor and triple them for your internal resourcing for the project. Make sure you also have both a project manager and an executive sponsor. Buy in at all levels is critical to success.

Roberto:
From my experience even 96 days is too short a time period for the proper configuration, data mapping, process development, training, testing and user acculturation to successfully complete. A typical implementation normally takes 7-9 months with the proper change techniques deployed. A smaller company might accomplish the implementation in 5-7 months.

Your greatest risk, isn't on the software side, it's the employee side of the implementation. Ask each software provider to re-quote training and implementation and provide their hourly rate and hours allowed for all.

Roberto, unless the scope has been defined in minute detail and the vendor is guaranteeing a "Not to exceed" with their quote, the number of days has no meaning.

Why does one software vendor quote 36 days and the next 96? That numer can be as fictitious as the software salesperson is just trying to keep the total cost under a budget number. Or maybe wants you to think there software is easier to implement so therefore needs less days. Or maybe the one quoting 96 days is most concerned with customer satisfaction and will not take on a project unless it is certaing to succeed.

Regardless of how much the vendor quotes, once you have used up the 36 days and you decide you need more training, guess who you buy that training from? You will only know how many days it took to impement Vendor X on the day you go live.

What is in the implementation scope? How fast does your staff learn? How fast does your staff adjust to change? What percentage of your project team's time will be contributed to the project? When your company receives the largest order ever, and its during the implementation, will your implementation team stay the course, or will they be transfered to the new order?

The point is no one knows how many days it will take to implement any system. There are way too many variables.

Simply put, no matter which system you buy, the more time your internal team invests in the implementation, the less time you will need from the software vendor, and vice versa.

A good (but not perfect) litmus test is to speak to multiple references and ask them how many hours did they use and how much of their time did they invest. And were they over or below budget? That trend should help you to understand what 36 days versus 96 days really means.

Mission critical for a successful implementation is the ownership of the project by the senior management team. They need to be the champions and motivate their staff to attend the training, and practice in the training environment with your data. You need to work with your software provider to determine the capability of your staff and the depth of training you want in the pre go live environment.

A train the trainer process is the most cost effective. Be prepared to spend additional funds post go live to fine tune your business processes.

You also need to prepare an ROI model that you can rely on. Ask your vendor's referrals if post go live ROI metrics were met.

As you can see there are many different, correct answers to you question, determined by the history of everyone contributing.

I agree with what Bill has contributed, but respectfully disagree that a linear relationship exists between software cost and implementation cost. A norm of X$ of software = Y$ of implementation cost rarely exists. This may give you a good feel for the level of complexity, but no more. I can train a company of $100 million dollars how to use A/P in the same amount of time it would take me to train a company of $10 million dollars. And experience shows that smaller companies sometimes require a lot more handholding than larger companies because they don?t have access to in-house talent.

Checking implementation references is required, but make sure you are checking the references of the particular consultants that will be assigned to your project, otherwise the comments are meaningless. You want to check to see if they were easy to work with, available, provided the correct solutions for the problems encountered, and had a good grasp of the content without getting in over their head too often. It?s the nature of the business to need a lifeline every once in a while, but you don?t want it to be amateur hour on your dime.

You see a common thread in the comments that you must have your requirements and scope defined. Without that you are doomed.

Terry (Mr_Manufacturing) and Richard have implementation times at both ends of the spectrum (My experience falls in line with Richard). But both are correct based on their experience and history, and expectations of what a successful implementation is. You need to determine what a SUCCESFUL implementation for you is.

All in all every implementation is unique. Your best bet is to work with someone that is not affiliated with the vendors to build a project plan to support your goals for a successful go live, and then work with the group you feel will most adequately implement that plan.

I don't buy the 36 day implementation. I would question that right
away. Most initial implementations take 3-6 months depending on
complexity and how much assistance you require from their implementation
team. Since you received 3 bids wit relatively quick turn I assume all
3 believe implementation will be easy - likely based on wat you laid out
as requirements. Most of the work is really on your side so if you told
them you could accomplish your tasks within a week or two it may have
skewed the estimate. Are you doing any data migration or are you
planning on entering existing data from your DOS program?

I agree with all of the others and their opinions. My experience is to have the customer take as much responsibility as they can absorb so they can be self supporting. I think one major item missed in this discussion is to carefully decide what are the deliverables or goals of your project. Once you put a box around it, don't let it change if possible. Larger budgets mean larger scope. Don't try to do everything at once. Do as much as the staff can absorb for change and training. Look for the 5-10 targets that get you the biggest bang for your buck (Euro). There is always time to implement the more exotic aspects of your new software.

Remember the law of diminishing return - don't obsess about something unless it returns several times the value to implement. Otherwise you are just trading dollars for no real return. A properly implemented ERP software should pay off within a year of going live. A rule of thumb I have used is that a company depending on complexity should budget 1-2% of annual sales for the purchase and implemention of a new ERP package. In the case of Roberto I would say 1.5-2% is reasonable due to the complexity of the product he builds and that there is likely engineering or drafting services or field work involved.

I agree with the others when they say you should vet this project with an independent consultant. Use them to check on your due dilligence. Make sure they have no connection with any of the vendors. Also do speak to references about the implementation process. Even if a reference tells you there was an issue, ask them how the vendor resolved it with the customer. Work plans are notorious for suprises and changes. If you as a customer are kept in the loop and presented with the rational and the business case for the change and you sign off prior to any change in scope then the vendor is a worthy partner.

A software vendor that does a proper requirements analysis should have a reasonable handle on what consulting should be expected. The second step should be to do a scope and GAP document as one of the first steps of the implementation. That should allow the vendor to lock in the budget. This should include th customer's obligations and resonsibilities. 90% of all failures are issues with the customer not understanding the efforts involved or have the correct expectations of what the software or the implementation can deliver. It should also include the deliverables the consultants will expect you staff to do as assignments at various steps of the work plan. A good example is cleaning up your parts list prior to conversion. If the customer doesn't do the task then it is left for the consultant (at $175 per hour) to do the work to keep the project on time. Their cost just adds to the budget unnecessarily but the vendor is not at fault.

I use the word "should" a lot as this is not an exact science. Part of your decision will be based on your gut feel. Who do you seem to trust the most and has customers willing to vouch for that trust. It is all part of the equation.

IFS Applications is a highly modular, SOA compliant ERP application suite. IFS has been in business since 1983. A $400M company, they are well established, and have a very strong presence in both manufacturing, along with extensive installs in the steel industry. With more than 97% customer satisfaction ranking from independent reviewers, they top the industry in customer satisfaction.

Now for the shameless plug :-) Astra is a registered IFS Services Partner, with a staff averaging over 10 years of IFS specific experience. Contact us - even if you just want to talk about what IFS can do for you - no sales pressure; just sharing information. Astra is predominantly US based, but IFS itself also has a major presence in the UK and Europe.

Kurt,
You are correct that the ratio of software to services (historically) for a package is reflective of the complexity of the package to deploy. You are also correct in terms of to train someone how to do payables is pretty much the same no matter the size of the company. However training someone how to voucher a payable is only a small portion of an implementation effort. Many things go into a successful implementation and past history is a good indicator of what you will be facing. If the last 100 companies that implemented the software averaged 3 times services to software you should really expect that you will be in the 2.5 to 3.5 range not the 1 to 1 or 5 to 1 range. I agree this doesn't point out where the complexities are (and they could be anywhere, for example in some systems if you take a mis-step it can cause you 2 or 3 days to right the ship; while in others it's a 5 minute fix) but it does set an appropriate expectation. Most organizations are not at the edges of the bell curve, for those that are the ratios won't mean much but for the rest of us they are are good indication of where we will end up.
Bill

As you indicated earlier, your key outcome is to reduce business risk. When it comes to the actual implementation one of the key risks is poor knowledge management - that is poor transfer of knowledge from the vendor to you and your staff, the client. The number one reason why ERP implementations fail is due to a lack of resources and the number one resource that is often denied to projects is time.

Time for your people to learn and to practice. As one of the other contributors indicated - have a look at where the days are allocated, have a look at HOW they intend to transfer the knowledge to your people. This is where many vendors fail miserably. They feel when they have someone stand in front of your people and lecture them about how you do things in the new system - this is training. Not so.

Your objective should be to have your people to a level of competency that they are essentially self sufficient at go live. That you have enough knowledge within the business to answer the how do I do this questions and to diagnose common issues without having to go back to the vendor for assistance. (Vendors may not want this as it cuts out a source of revenue for them however it does reduce the risk to the business).

You should only need to go back to the vendor when there are structural issues with the product. So in order to gain this level of self sufficiency requires a serious commitment and allocation of time to the practice of lessons. Repetition is the mother of learning - so make sure your people fully get each lesson BEFORE they move on to the next lesson. Don't let the vendor push your guys forward if they aren't ready.

Be disciplined about this portion of the project and make sure there is LOTS of practice and that you put them to the test over each area they have been trained in. You want to make sure they GET IT before you move forward. If you don't instil the discipline here - the business will suffer later.

Another thing you may wish to do is to get a list of other businesses using the product, go and see them and speak to the users of the product that were at the company during the implementation. Ask them what sort of training they received and what would they do differently. If they followed the vendor's plan, then there will be some gems and real insight in their responses. Typically these people say they essentially learnt on the job after go live. This has an impact on your customers and one of the goals of all my implementations is, "No negative impact on the customer". We are allowed to have positive impacts on them but no negative impacts. And staff apologising to customers because "they are learning or using a new system" is a negative impact and a sign the knowledge transfer was not handled properly.

Roberto,
Based on the three packages listed, this is in line with what the general expectation would be. AX being the heaviest footprint, while the other two being close with Epicor being slightly higher in days. If you check with your references on the implementation side, they will come back with the same type of results. By the way, while you are checking this you should also see what type of hardware is required to support your size environment. Make sure you verify with the references to assure that what the vendors give you is accurate. You should find that the Visual offering comes in with the smallest hardware expenditure of these three packages.
Bill

David:
(and group)
Indeed one of my key objectives here is to reduce business risk. I must ensure that the software partner is stable in the market place. Unfortunately through this forum and through other internet blogs both EPICOR and Infor are receiving negative press as to their financials and future. Can anybody provide some concrete data here - this is a potential show stopper for me. I think I have identified 3 functionally fit products - but technology wise and future proof wise which is more stable - AX, EPICOR or Infor.

Roberto:
Is Visual quoting DCMS as its WMS (Warehouse Management System)? If so make sure that the DCMS database has been integrated with VE. It was initially developed with a separate database causing severe data synchronization difficulties.

At 10:23 AM 3/10/2010, rpmorris via erp-select wrote:
>Posted by rpmorris
>on Mar 10 at 10:25 AM Mark as helpful
>David:
>(and group)
>Indeed one of my key objectives here is to reduce business risk. I
>must ensure that the software partner is stable in the market place.
>Unfortunately through this forum and through other internet blogs
>both EPICOR and Infor are receiving negative press as to their
>financials and future. Can anybody provide some concrete data here -
>this is a potential show stopper for me. I think I have identified 3
>functionally fit products - but technology wise and future proof
>wise which is more stable - AX, EPICOR or Infor.

The problem is you've been sent on a mission that cannot be accomplished.
If business risk is the primary issue, than you cannot pick any of
those products. And in fact there are only three products you would
probably be allowed to choose, none of which can you afford the
millions and millions of dollars they cost.

There are *no* products that are invulnerable. It's the nature of
the business. It's like being asked to pick a safe poison.
Stability is a judgement call and you want concrete data. That's
just not reality.

My suggestion is to do what's right for the company instead of
what the original request might have been. The real way to
reduce risk is *not* to try to predict the future. Only
to plan for it. The biggest risk reduction is making sure
the product fits your business and will make it grow. Not
listening to some pundits with their own agendas trying to
whip up non-existent news. Sure you want a vendor to be
around for a while. But beyond 5 years, you'll be on
some other product anyway. All those vendors are going
to be around in that time frame - they all have too many $.
The rest is FUD from competitors and the like. Your "risk
reduction" should be placed more on will selection of the
product and the company supplying me with implementation
and support going to make the company grow? Companies
and their products with a proven track record of that
in your industry for companies like your own is what
reduces real risk.

If there is such a show stopper, face reality that there will be
no product chosen at all and move on. Or pick one based on
your subjective opinion because yours is better than letting
someone else decide.

Microsoft and Epicor are both publicly traded firms and hence the only ones that can legally provide financial data. However, just because a company is publicly traded does not necessarily make it stable as Epicor recently fought off a hostile takeover bid from Elliot Group Hedge Fund. Epicor is also significantly smaller in size and scale to both Infor and Microsoft and likely most vulnerable in terms of financial stability.

Additionally, just because a company is privately held does not necessarily make it less financially stable. For example, SAS Institute is a great software company that has been around for 34 years, is extremely profitable, and has never gone public because the CEO never wanted to dilute his holding in the company. Some may argue that I don't know that they've been profitable, but after 34 years still being in business, there's a good bet they are making money. So, just because a company is private does not automatically mean it is not financially stable. Conversely, just because a company is publicly traded does not automatically mean that it is financially stable.

From the comment you have made, it sounds like you are more concerned with whether your product will continue to be supported and by extension whether the vendor will continue to be around to support your product. Again, this, too, is somewhat of a myth. Some of the most stable companies in the ERP space such as SAP and Oracle intentionally stop supporting older versions of their products with the intention of forcing their customers to migrate to the newest versions whether they want to or not. Infor, on the other hand, has made a commitment to support customers on any version of a product no matter how old that product is. This is why Infor is the largest ISV for the i-Series because all of the other firms stopped supporting their i-Series products while Infor continues to support theirs. In fact, when Infor acquired SSA, they reversed SSA's policy of stopping support for older versions of software and forcing upgrades. If product support is your main concern which you seem to associate with vendor stability, then Infor is probably the best vendor because they will support your product no matter how old it is, which cannot necessarily be said for any other vendor including Epicor and Microsoft. Additionally, unlike Epicor and Microsoft, if you do decide to later upgrade your product, Infor has the great Flex Program that allows you to upgrade in a very cost effective manner.

Ultimately, nobody can accurately forecast what is going to happen in the future regardless of whether a company is public or private. What really ought to be of most concern for you is does the software meet your business requirements and will you continue to receive product support at a cost of ownership that is reasonable for you?

I hope that helped and dispelled any myths that seem to be floating around out here on IT Toolbox.

DownWithBigERP,
You make it sound like Infor is the good old doting grandfather of ERP.
Granted they have acquired many of the older packages, but they did it only
for the maintenance revenue, and the eventual possibility of switching the
customer to a newer offering, not for the good of the world as you would
make us believe. Let us not forget for a minute that all business are
profit driven, private or public. The public companies have to satisfy the
stockholders, the private ones are driven to line the pockets of the top
executives. Since you opened the kimono, let's take this one step
further. Infor continues to take money out of the pockets of the VAR's who
original supported these products in their effort to increase revenues by
bringing the maintenance, upgrade, install and training money in house. They
do all this yet do not increase in house staff to pick up the slack and
experience necessary to continue to support these older products. What you
have then is a eventual house of cards... caveat emptor!

> The public companies have to satisfy the
> stockholders, the private ones are driven to line the pockets of the top
> executives.

Well, that's not entirely fair. They've got stockholders too, in Infor's case, private equity groups who financed many of those acquisitions with very complicated debt instruments (i.e. other people's money). So they're interested first and foremost in return on capital - and I suspect if the top execs were lining their pockets to the detriment of those institutional shareholders, they'd be looking for new work pretty quickly.

But your point about the impact on former VARs (and, of course, customers) is right on. And in the end, of course, the PE guys and the execs will be looking for an exit before the falloff in customers becomes more of a drain on net income than they can make up with expense cuts.

Microsoft is a public company but they don't show what the contribution is from each of the Dynamics products nor if the product line is making a profit. Obviously Microsoft is a solid organization, but what percentage of their business is the ERP suites, what percentage of that is Dyanmics AX, and how important to Microsoft is the division>

Epicor is a public company, they have lost money each of the last two years, their retail division accounts for about a third of the total business, and Epicor 9 actually generates very little to the total corporation (the Epicor ERP suites include Vantage, Vista, Avanate, DataFlo, InfoFlo, Manfact, ROI, just to name a few; and they have other products to boot such as CRM offerings).

Infor is a private company and they don't publish their financials. So if you are serious about their stability, simply ask to have one of your executives talk to Infor executives with the speciifc intention of looking at their financials and understanding where they stand. Infor is more than willing to do this for prospects (under a NDA).

In terms of "technology & future proof", is that what you are really making a decision on? From everything I have seen in this bolg, I don't believe so. However, if this is important to you, the Dynamics offering is the least important to the three organizations to their forward sucess, and Epicor is by far the least financially stable. That would leave Infor as the orgainization that is driving its business in the SMB ERP market & with the financial wnere withall to survey (if you take my suggestion of having your executives talk to the Infor execs, you'll find they have more cash on hand than the annual revenues of Epicor).

You have to be kidding me! All three of the companies listed have acquired other companies, as have all the major players. In case you haven't notices there has been some significant consolidation going on in the ERP space. If you aren't one of the companies buying up other companies, you are one of the ones that have been bought up (or are not significant enough to be on the radar screen). In terms of dollars being spent to support a particular package, do you have any idea of what is being spent on any of the packages? Do you have any idea on what was being spent prior to their acquisition? From your response I would say obviously not. Look into the facts before making a statement that is off base...
Bill

I won't talk to Infor's financial situation or R&D program for their plethora of products as I don't have the kind of inside connections with the company's executives that others are saying they do. But I will talk a little about Epicor in the context of having been a channel partner for 15 years.

Comments like "they've lost money for the last two years" (sic) need to have some context put around them. The grand total of that net loss is $US 4.69M across 2009 and 2008, against total revenues of $US 897.5M. Not *exactly* about to fall into receviership then perhaps? And yes Epicor does have multiple product families, acquired over the years, but there are really only three main ERP ones, especially given that one of those (Vantage 8) was itself the beginnings of convergence of all of their manufacturing lines. Epicor 9 is the next generation of Epicor's unified SOA platform and a further convergence of products across those 'big 3' - both aspects of which Infor hasn't even begun to think about and Microsoft started at least four times and abandonned.

In terms of the Elliot Group takeover bid, Elliot owned 10% of the stock and around a year ago with Epicor's share price artifically depressed by the GFC knew that it represented an enormous opportunity to grab a great value company if they could. They *don't* invest in losers. But, the shareholdings are pretty tightly held and Board's view that the share price had very significant upside has been well upheld; today's 52-week shareprice change is 228%, again not only a pretty good call on their behalf but obviously a great testament form the equity markets that Epicor is a pretty sound investment...

R&D spend over the last 2 years has been about $110M or about 12.25% of revenue - again, not exactly a sign of a company about fold nor at the low end of the spectrum and, again, especially since the bulk of that would likely be attributed to Epicor 9.

As for support, Epicor's publicly stated policy is that as long as customer is prepared to pay maintenance and the knowledge of their product exists somewhere in the company, then Epicor will continue to provide helpdesk support for that customer. And, realistically that's about as much as one could possibly hope for...

Mark,
Interesting take, Epicor has a bunch of products but only the ones you choose count for consideration, while the rest of the market has all their products count in the mix. You don't argue that Epicor hasn't lost money, you just argue that after all the cost cutting measures (lay offs, which I'm sure you'll argue is only people that have nothing to do with development or support so don't worry) they just lose a little bit each year, and because it is only a little bit that is the sign of a healthy company. As to Elliott they actually control around 15% (SEC document will verify) and their standstill agreement with Epicor ended in February so they are free to commence activities again. As to the huge stock jump (amazing what one can to with numbers) the stock had fallen to around the $3 range and still isn't anywhere close to what it has been in the past. As to R&D spending, they are at least 40% less from a percentage of revenue than the other two and the other two have a much bigger revenue number that the percentage is being applied against. As to helpdesk support, 18% to 20% is a big number to have someone pick up a phone. You should be receiving product upgrades that that size of an investment. Nice that they have a policy, but...

The take away is they are by far the smallest of the three (read as most vulnerable) and they are the only one losing money (I know they are only losing a little bit so they'll make it up over time).
Bill

Your first point is validated by looking into the ERP Graveyard (courtesy
of xTuple), some are just more brazen than others. I just singled out
Infor from personal experience. And yes I do have knowledge of their
acquisition and development costs, do you? You seem to have missed the point
which was the customer/prospect concern for future viability from these
behemoths of consolidation.

Bob,
Actually I do have a handleon the costs associated with all three of the organizations as I have worked for/with each of them and have friends at each. Do you have the same insider access coming from personnally working with them? As to the point of future survival, didn't miss it at all. It would seem obvious that the firms who are acquiring are much more likely to survive than the ones that are being acquired... Don't suppose you would see this differently.
Bill

If the software provider being considered is financially unstable what are the potential outcomes?

Case 1:
Provider is acquired.
Product is no longer serviced by the new owner.
Product is no longer developed by the new owner.

This is an unlikely case. The new owner would probably not marginalize their newly acquired customers or potential revenue base.
When my ERP provider was acquired by Infor, service levels were maintained if not improved, and I continued to deal with same people at my VAR.
Now almost 10 years later, I have a vastly improved product and more choices for add-on modules. Being acquired by an industry juggernaut is not necessarily a bad thing.

Case 2:
Provider limps along, continually downsizing and spending less and less on service and development.
This a more likely case however it's unsustainable and I think the provider will eventually be acquired. See Case 1.

I don't think you can mitigate risks like these. The potential outcomes are too nebulous to guard against. In my experience the stability and experience of your chosen VAR has at least as much bearing on your long term satisfaction. Consider the product with the best fit for you business and a VAR with local support and the longest track record of satisfied customers.

Who knows what could happen to Epicor or any of the others tomorrow? The realm of possibilities is huge.

I agree - there are some rotten aggregators out there, but just because an ERP has been purchased, or purchased many times, does not make it any less viable. Simply making a list of acquired ERPs and tacking a "Caveat emptor" at the end is glib FUD at its worst.

Such a silly topic. As a consultant/rep in this space I try to stay clear of this type of not-so-subtle slagging of the competition. Roberto all you're getting now is a collection of the "battle-card" techniques sales reps use to overcome objections to their offerings. If you're concerned about the financial stability of the companies involved it's likely because a rep made you concerned. Focus on the functional fit to your organization. The ability of the application to meet your requirements is more important to making your project a success.

Some universal truths: Since Microsoft bought GP, NAV, AX, etc...every competitor has been saying they'll divest the product line at some point. They haven't in 10 years and they won't in another 10. I remember 4 or 5 years ago everybody said Epicor was going out of business. They haven't. And now everybody is saying that Infor will fail because they can't handle all the companies/products they required. They can and they will handle it.

The reality is that you'll likely be replacing whatever you buy in 10 years and all of these companies will be around in some form or another in that time. You'll always have an upgrade/migration path to some extent. Work with the company that seems the most interested in understanding your business and helping you use the technology to best meet your functional requirements. Focus on the fit, focus on the fit, focus on the functional fit.

Roberto, you mentioned previously that you planned to conduct site visits at customers of these vendors. Did you actually visit customers of all three? If so, how similar were each to your operations? And what did you learn from the site visits at each?

My experience and related knowledge base (30 years) has been with the
Infor acquisitions, primarily ASK, MAPICS, Fourth Shift, and Visual. These
companies represent a very large base of customers and consequently a
enormous strain on resources for support. While facts and figures for Visual,
Dynamics and Epicor are readily obtainable, I would really like to know how
some of these other older systems and their users are managing. How
does that go... look to the past to see into the future?

It may be difficult to find E9 customers for the size that you are (12Mil). Several clients I've worked with have had similar difficulties finding smaller E9 installs here in the States. Epicor used to have a product called "Vista", which was targeted to companies more your size. This was a scaled down version (less modules, simpler architecture) of Vantage, which Epcior will tell you that the new E9 product is largely based upon. However, visiting Vista customers on a previous and scaled down release of Vantage, may not indicate the likelihood of your success since there are large functional and technical differences between E9 and Vista.

To my knowledge, Epicor has not made a similar "Vista-type" configuration available for the E9 product. Perhaps I'm just unaware and someone can comment to the contrary?

As you will find on this site, advise on finding similar-sized-to-your-own-company vendor customers, on the same release of software and sharing similar critical criteria to your own is one of the best ways to evaluate and reduce your risk.

My experience has been that E9 is targeted at much larger, mid-market clients.

Not sure exactly what you are looking for. You have received a lot of feedback from various people addressing all sorts of aspects of both companies & packages. If you are looking for specific "functional nuggets" no one on this forum has enough information about your company to point you to specific areas, and even if we did the packages keep evolving so that the landscape continually changes. You are the only one that can decide if the functionality of the two systems meet your detailed requirements, you also are the one that needs to check references that are similar to you. If you are looking at the total solution you need to also consider the company who is the author of the software, the on going maintenance you will receive, the services to help you deploy, the hardware required to support the software, and the total cost of each solution. The answers to all these should be align to the relative importance your organization places on each element, and from there you should have enough information to make a decision. If it still appears to be a "tie", then ask yourself which of the two organizations were the most responsive, which group of people did you feel most comfortable with, and who do you want to have as a long term partner. This then becomes your tie breaker.

Right, Macola is an older technology product that is now owned by Exact software... the never had any relation to the Lilly Visual company that is now owned by Infor. My 2 cents is that if you like Epicor 9, you will like Visual or SyteLine from Infor. Infor has a very similar feature set to Epicor 9, but it is much better supported around the world than Epicor, and the technology is far superior than the old Progress technology in Epicor that they enhanced by putting a .NET user interface on and a SQL back end... which is complex to customize and support and requires alot more horsepower to get decent performance from since you are dealing with so many layers of different technology.

I am working with Microsoft Dynamic both ERP Axapta/ Navision, both ERP
package a good in manufacturing but selection depend on company budget.

if you need Business intelligence you utilized inbuilt BI tool in MS SQL
Server 2005/2005, you can reduce the cost through useing ms sql reporting
service, we can develop a dashboard information system through OLTP process
from the ERP, so it suficient for midsize company, if you have
heavy transaction daily bsis, so u can think for BI for third party or
inbuild with ERP

if you want see a demo of MS Reporting service pl write back to me at
email@removed
regards

Sorry Steve, but I need to correct you on your summary of Epicor. Not sure who's compettitve marketing materials you've been reading, but Epicor 9 is the second generation of Epicor's 100% .Net-based SOA, not some rickety .Net gui over a legacy architecture as your post implies. All core ERP modules and functionality, UI, business logic, workflow and business orchestration/integration components are built in and for that 100% SOA.

Mark,
Seeing as how you have "corrected" Steve, wondering if you can answer two basic questions that might shed some light on this:

1. Is the entire application written in .NET (not does it conform to Epicor's definition of SOA, but is it ALL .NET)?
2. Does it require the Progress database schema to be deployed to access any database (inclusive of SQL)?

MarkBat,
Seems you may be buying into what the Epicor marketing implies... that it is 100% .NET, but sorry it is not. Their detailed technology white papers show that Progress is at the core and it requires a Progress Data Server in order to run on a Msft SQL database. Here is a reference point to support this... just this month an Epicor user posted the following on IT Tool box pointing out what he discovered:...

To run Epicor 9 they say you will need 5 servers. And you will also need very fast clients. Otherwise it is very disapointing in its performance. Epicor 9 is multi-layered software. You have the screens written as DLL's in .net visual studio, and you have the Progress appserver in the middle and you have the Progress database or optionally an SQL server database at the back end. When you complete a screenful of data and hit the enter key, it writes the information to a temp file. That temp file is then picked up by the appserver and posted into the database. While it is doing this kind of thing, you get a lot of useless messages appearing on the screen telling you what it is up to. For example 'loading screen parameters' etc. The messages cannot be responded to; they are information only, but not of much use once you have seen them a few times.

Roberto, all three ERP solution on your shortlist will probably run your
business. From a risk perspective, here is my 2 cents:

1) Epicor - not 100% .net, still using Progress database as Steve so
well pointed out. Also, check out Epicor's customer support L.

2) Infor Visual - Written in Gupta (SQL Windows). Supports multiple
plants, but at one time, could not have the same FG in two different
warehouses. I don't know if they got that fixed. Coupled with Infor's (65+
products), development investment and support is spread pretty thin
throughout all the product lines.

You may consider including Jeeves Universal on your shortlist. Jeeves
Universal was recently rated number 1 in Sweden above Microsoft Dynamics and
is not CPU intensive. Jeeves Universal is also very well suited for complex,
hard core manufacturing.

The Jeeves Exido_IT-Barometer positioning reflects selection, but not performance after the sale. I agree with the IT intensive nature of AX, as well some additional insight on the Epicor "glue-together-a bunch-of-dispate-products" as a strategy approach. It is tough enough to get a monolithic design effort to produce operational internal interfaces, without having to glue a bunch of products together and pray it will work.

IFS has a 97% customer satisfaction rating, after the fact - real world operational satisfaction, not some esoteric selection checklist. The new version's human interface is winning industry acclaim, and the SOA compliant modular structure allows implementing just what you need, avoiding paying for unneeded modules.

Mike,
Agree about the Epicor assessment in that there are Progress components under the covers. Yes Visual is written in Gupta (not sure why this matters), but Infor's development dollars being spread thin is pure FUD. If a prospect has an issue, go to Infor and see what is being spent on your product of interest in R&D. You'll see a bigger investment than what goes into Jeeves... Also agree that Axapta is IT intense, but that is how it is sold (they see the customization environment as an advantage to their offering). Nothing new here.

As to the Jeeves recommendation. Not much of a presence in the US, so not much in the way of implementation support. In fact if you look at what is sold outside of the Nordic countries it was less than $1 Million of licenses. Seeing how they have "major" offices in Germany, France, and the UK; it doesn't leave much for the rest of the world. If you are talking risk for the other three, how on earth can you bring this one forward?
Bill

Mike,
Agree about the Epicor assessment in that there are Progress components under the covers. Yes Visual is written in Gupta (not sure why this matters), but Infor's development dollars being spread thin is pure FUD. If a prospect has an issue, go to Infor and see what is being spent on your product of interest in R&D. You'll see a bigger investment than what goes into Jeeves... Also agree that Axapta is IT intense, but that is how it is sold (they see the customization environment as an advantage to their offering). Nothing new here.

As to the Jeeves recommendation. Not much of a presence in the US, so not much in the way of implementation support. In fact if you look at what is sold outside of the Nordic countries it was less than $1 Million of licenses. Seeing how they have "major" offices in Germany, France, and the UK; it doesn't leave much for the rest of the world. If you are talking risk for the other three, how on earth can you bring this one forward?
Bill

Are you stating that you can go to the Infor website and find out the $
being spent on R&D on each of their myriad of products? Please tell us
where that link is because it would save a lot of consternation on everyone
who doubts their intent to support all those old products and their overall
long term staying power.